


Cooking

by illyrian_bitch_queen



Series: Modern, Married Feysand [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cooking, F/M, Fluff, Married Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9559034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyrian_bitch_queen/pseuds/illyrian_bitch_queen
Summary: Feyre tries to cook dinner for Rhys. Modern au fluff.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An anon on tumblr requested a domestic, fluffy, feysand fic.

I came home to the smell of food cooking.

Now, in our home, that was a smell that I _never_  came home to. Not since the first month after Feyre had moved in with me. She had tried to cook, to be fair to her. But even then she had burned everything she put heat to and served everything she didn’t dangerously raw. We’d pretty quickly decided that I would cook for us.

I wasn’t great, but I had learned from Cassian, my friend who was so good at cooking that he was currently working towards an associates degree in culinary arts, over the years.

Feyre had only tried to cook for us in the first place because she worked from home, painting commissions for rich strangers. She figured it was easier for her to have the time for cooking than me.

Working as a cop, I had started out with crazy hours. The newest cops typically pull the worst shifts, ten hours from eight at night to six in the morning, or long hours on weekends. But I had been working at the station I was currently at for four years now, two of which I had been living with Feyre.

After those first two years ended, my schedule became a bit easier on me, which is how I eventually found the time to go out on a blind date with Feyre–one that we were both forced into by my cousin–and to fall in love with her.

She moved in with me about six months after that first date and I had still had unreliable hours that had her up all night worried or changing her schedule around so that she could go for dinner with me at ten at night. But now, four years into my career as a cop, things had settled down more. I tended to get mostly eight-to-five shifts although a day or two out of the week I still pulled the night shifts, as even senior officers still did. And because I didn’t have kids like some of the other officers with my age and seniority, I still pulled weekend shifts pretty often.

But since I was usually home by five-thirty lately, we’d fallen into a routine that involved me making dinner or Feyre ordering takeout before or just after I got home. But today was apparently an abnormality.

Feyre was cooking tonight.

Oh no.

The last time she’d cooked was a month after she moved in. She had nearly set the damn kitchen on fire.

Needless to say, I was pretty wary to enter our home.

I had changed out of my uniform before coming home, as I usually did, but I still had my gun tucked into my belt. I was almost tempted to hold onto it until I made sure that Feyrewasnt being held hostage while someone… _while someone cooked us dinner?_  I shook my head, just imagining what Feyre would say if I’d begin that sentence out loud.

I took the gun off and placed it in the locked drawer of the small table in the entryway, careful not to disturb the vase of flowers on top of it that I had bought Feyre last week for our anniversary.

As I made my way into the living room, turning towards the archway that separated it from the kitchen, I heard a hissed storm of swearing from my wife. I paused in the middle of the room, debating whether I really wanted to go in there.

“Rhys? Is that you?”

I cringed slightly. “No?”

A moment later, Feyre was leaning against the doorway with a frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned. “Did something happen today? Is everyone alright?”

I waved off her questions. “Nothing happened. Well, I mean, other than a few traffic tickets and a lot of paperwork. It was a slow day.”

She smiled in relief. “Good. Did you happen to talk to Cassian today?”

She turned before I could answer and slipped back into the kitchen. I followed her a bit warily. “No. He had a late shift tonight. Why?”

Cassian had been in the police academy with me and our close friend Azriel. We all worked at the same station now, but Cassian had decided a year ago that he was going to take online courses to get a degree, even though he had no intentions of doing anything with it. But he had always enjoyed cooking, and it was pretty nice when he invited us over to have a delicious, massive meal he’d cooked as part of his class requirements.

Cassian and Feyre had a good relationship. She was really close with all of my friends, and everyone at the station knew her. She tended to show up often, bringing me lunch or just coming over to keep me company while I did paperwork. It wasn’t _technically_  allowed, but nobody ever said anything when she showed up. Especially because she would sometimes bring everyone in the station coffee early in the morning or late at night.

Cassian had a habit though, of pissing everyone off. It was a skill he’d perfected over the years. But god, Feyre gave him as much hell as he gave her. The two of them sometimes seemed more vicious than friendly, but they always ended up making each other laugh rather than getting mad.

Now, I thought that she must have been spending more time with Cassian than I realized.

Because the food she had prepared for dinner was sitting on the small round table we had in the kitchen for when it was just the two of us, and it didn’t look burnt. It actually looked pretty damn good. And it smelled better. I knew my eyes were wide and I saw Feyre fidget a bit as she stood to the side of the spread she’d put on the table.

For the first time, I realized that she was dressed nicer than usual, wearing a pretty little dress that reached mid-thigh, half of her hair pulled back into a neat braid and the necklace I had given her for her last birthday sparkling around her neck. She was still barefoot, which made me smile. Feyre hated shoes most of the time. I had bought her boots and slippers on several occasions that had the lightest amount of fabric or glamour possible, and thin, thin soles just so that she would feel as though she was as close to barefoot as possible.

Her eyes were glimmering with excitement and nerves as she looked at me. She was completely out of character tonight, but the shy side I was seeing now was just as lovely as the rest of her.

“Does everything look alright? Cassian talked me through it over the phone, but I’m still not sure if I did it all right.”

The meal looked amazing. She had set out two plates and had already filled them both with a full plate of spaghetti, a juicy-looking chicken breast placed over each of them, cheese melted over the top, with a piece of soft bread to the side.

She’d also filled two wine glasses beside our plates and had put a pretty, lacy tablecloth over the stained, scratched wood, worn by her paint and my habitual rough-housing with Cassian.

She shifted her weight again and I raised my eyes back to her. I smiled and stepped forward, pulling her into my arms and kissing her on the lips gently. She smiled at me when I pulled away.

“Did I do a good job then? I tried to do exactly what Cassian said, but you know I’m not exactly great at following directions…”

I laughed, resting my forehead against hers. “Oh, do I know that.” Her eyes shone as she scowled at me playfully. I just chuckled and brushed my lips against hers again.

“Let me go get dressed in something nicer and then we can eat,” I said softly, beginning to pull away. She grabbed my hands with a frown.

“You don’t have to get changed,” she protested. I shook my head.

“If you’re going to look that gorgeous, I have to at least try to dress myself up to match.”

She blushed, but allowed me to pull away with a kiss to her cheek. “I’ll be back in just a second,” I promised. She smiled and turned to take her seat to wait for me.

I slipped into our bedroom and allowed a silly grin to overcome my face at the thought of all the work Feyre had gone through to make a nice dinner for us. I never minded cooking for her, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate what she was doing tonight.

I dug through my closet for black slacks and a nice, dark blue dress shirt to match her dress. I stopped in the bathroom to smooth my hair back into place and spray a bit of cologne on that I knew she loved before heading back out of the room and down the hall.

When I returned to the kitchen, she had found a way to dim the lights so it was a softer, more intimate atmosphere. I looked around in a mixture of confusion and appreciation. I hadn’t even know we _could_  dim the lights in the kitchen.

She stood when I stepped into the doorway, and came over to tuck her arm under mine, tangling our fingers together. I leaned down to kiss her, my free hand going up to cup her cheek. She kissed me back for only a moment before pulling away, smiling happily. “Come on. We have dinner to eat.”

I let her tug me to the table with our joined hands, grinning like a fool. I made her wait to sit until I’d pulled her chair out, but she insisted that she pull mine out first to ‘avoid any unnecessary sexism’.

I just laughed and let her, but still pushed her chair back in after she’d sat down.

Once we were both seated, I reached across the table for one of her hands, the one that sported the tattoo pattern that matched the ink stretching across my shoulders and upper arms.

It had originally been a tattoo set that Cassian, Azirel and I all got, but Feyre had gotten a part of the pattern specific to mine tattooed along her right hand and forearm about half a year before we were married, back when she had been in a dark place and had asked for it to be done so she could always have a piece of the support I gave her, even when I couldn’t be there.

We had only been just barely dating then, but I had already loved her.

Now, she’d had the tattoo for years. It was as much a part of her as it was a part of me and our friends, who were all as close as family. She had been talking for a while about getting her left arm done in the same way as her right. I liked the idea much more than I’d said, but hadn’t wanted to influence her decision too drastically by showing just how excited I was about the thought. I had always thought that the way the dark ink curved and twisted around her arm suited her, and it looked like a lace glove when looked at as a whole. I thought that a matching set would be even more beautiful than it already was.

I traced my thumb over the blue, nearly black swirls and vines twisting around her fingers. She had swore colorfully and loudly when the artist had done the ink on the underside of her fingers, and the skin between them. The back of her hand had been worse, and she’d hidden her face in my chest while the artist continued on his work.

But she had admitted afterwards that it was worth every second of pain.

“You’re so beautiful, Feyre, darling,” I said, overcome by just how lovely my wife was. “I love you so much.”

Her cheeks darkened, but she smiled brightly at the compliment. It had taken us a long time for her to become comfortable accepting compliments after she escaped from a tough situation with a dangerously controlling ex.

She’d been a ghost of the girl then that she was now, and every day I was thankful that she was safe and happy with me.

“Let’s eat,” Feyre said softly, still smiling at me.

I squeezed her fingers once before releasing her hand and picking up my fork and butter knife. After a few moments of cutting up my chicken, it became apparent that Feyre had overcooked it a bit, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep me from smiling at her proudly when she glanced at me to see my reaction. Her shoulders slumped in relief as I continued to shovel food into my mouth with a smile. It was enough to make the somewhat bland food–Cassian had probably not wanted to overwhelm her by trying to instruct her on seasoning–taste like a five star chef’s signature dish.

She began to eat herself a moment later, smiling as though as pleased with herself as I was with her.

We ate in a comfortable silence. When we were almost done, I spoke teasingly. “So, this means that you’re going to start cooking for me every night, right?”

Feyre’s smile widened at the subtle compliment. “I mean, I would have to be calling Cassian literally every night, but I’d do it for you.”

I smiled at her, brushing my thumb over the smooth underside of her engagement ring as I picked up her hand in mine.

“So,” she began after a moment of silence, tapping her fingers against my skin. “Instead of making dessert myself, I bought the stuff for it and figured that it might be fun to make it together.”

Her eyes were excited and playful, and I was caught off guard again at just how much I adored the woman in front of me.

“Of course,” I said with a wide grin. “What did you get?”

She pursed her lips for a moment, as though unsure. “Well, I got stuff for strawberry shortcake, then I found another recipe online that sounded _way_  better and bought the stuff for that too.”

I raised a brow. “You know that recipes you find online are rarely as easy as they seem, right?”

She frowned. “Well, obviously, since I had to call Cassian for dinner. But this one doesn’t even need cooking. Well, you have to bake a cake, but I just got that boxed mix thing that even I can do.”

I rested my chin in my hand, carefully hiding the laughter pulling at my lips. It was a bit of an exaggeration to say that she could make the boxed cakes. She usually waited until I got home to start it and left the baking part to me so that she didn’t have to worry about trying to decide when it was done. But I didn’t want to bring her down from the high that successfully making us dinner seemed to have given her, so I didn’t say anything.

Instead, I just asked her for the name of the recipe. She grinned wickedly, a teasing glint to her eyes.

Excitement and dread warred in me immediately at that look.

That was the look she gave me in the bedroom before she spent _hours_  teasing me with her hands and mouth, drawing out the pleasure as long as possible before giving me release. God, I loved those nights, but the anticipation within those hours was near painful sometimes. The look turned me on immediately, despite my best efforts.

“It’s called ‘better than sex’ cake,” she said, leaning forward and taking on a sultry tone. “I think we’ll have to prove it wrong later tonight, though.”

It took more discipline than I would ever admit to resist my urge to take her right there on our kitchen table. “Please tell me this recipe doesn’t take long to make. I don’t think I can handle you teasing me for too long tonight.”

She jutted her lower lip out in a pout that didn’t meet her eyes, which still glimmered excitedly. “I’m not a tease, Rhys. I always follow through on my promises.”

My fingers tightened a bit around her hand. “Hell yes, you do,” I murmured, leaning forward to trace my lips over hers faintly. “You just like to make me wait before you do.”

She grinned against my kiss, her eyes closing indulgently. “It makes it better in the end,” she whispered back, running the fingers of her free hand down the side of my neck.

I groaned at the contact and cursed out loud when she suddenly pulled away entirely, even pulling her hand out of mine. “Feyre,” I moaned as she began to pick up our plates with a devilish  twinkle in her eyes. “You know exactly what you do to me, you wicked woman.”

She just smiled innocently as she took the dishes to the sink, setting them down gently before turning to open the fridge. She pulled out a glass cake pan full of the things I assumed we would need to make this cake.

She set it down on the counter and gestured me over impatiently. I chuckled and stood, coming up to stand beside her.

She started pulling things out as I wrapped an arm around her waist, eyeing the ingredients curiously.

It included the cake mix, peanut butter cups, whipped cream, and…a lot of chocolate pudding containers.

I picked one up and looked at her curiously. She blushed a bit, grabbing it from me and setting it back down. “The recipe said we had to make our own pudding. But that sounded really hard, so I just bought a lot of mini puddings.”

I laughed softly, and she dug an elbow into my side playfully. “You know they have pudding mixes that are as easy to make as the cake ones, right?”

Her jaw dropped as she stared at me in disbelief. “You’re joking, right?” I just raised a brow, and she swore colorfully. “I’m going to kill Cassian. That fucking bastard. When I asked him where I could buy a big thing of pudding to substitute in, he told me just to buy a bunch of little ones. Can you even imagine the look on the check-out lady’s face when I brought up _thirty cups of pudding_  to scan?”

I was laughing fully then, at her complete outrage as well as honestly imagining the poor woman’s face. Feyre huffed at me, shoving me away half-heartedly. “You’re a prick.”

I just continued to chuckle, moving over so my chest was up against her back, my hands resting on her stomach. “Oh, you know it’s funny, Feyre, or you wouldn’t be trying so hard not to smile.”

Her grin broke free at my words, although she continued to try and fight it. I just rested my chin on her shoulder, watching as she reached for the box containing the cake mix.

She ripped it open with her nails, struggling a bit with the plastic before managing to tear it and dump it into the waiting bowl.

“Are you going to help or just keep silently laughing at me?” Feyre asked, her voice a mixture of annoyance and amusement.

I laughed under my breath and felt her shiver slightly against me, her back pressing against my chest more firmly. I allowed my lips to trace lightly over her skin as I responded, “I’ll help as soon as you tell me what to do, darling. I’m under your command tonight.”

I could just see enough of her face from behind her to know that she was grinning. “Oh? And how is that different from any other night?”

I laughed fully this time. “Absolutely nothing is different, love. I’m yours each and every night and day, every hour and second that you want me.”

She huffed as though rolling her eyes, but I saw her dip her head to disguise her silly grin.

I pressed a lingering kiss to her jaw before reaching around her for the egg carton. She’d tipped her head back to rest against my shoulder by the time I got it open, eyes slitted contentedly, her hands resting on the counter, inked fingers tracing an invisible pattern over the marble.

I cracked a couple eggs into the mixture and nudged Feyre with my hip to get her to help, shifting the milk until it touched her hands. She sighed, grabbing a measuring cup and beginning to unscrew the cap as I reached around her for a pudding cup.

I twisted away to her apparent displeasure, if her groan of annoyance was anything to judge by, to dig a spoon out from the silverware drawer.

She rolled her eyes as she began to stir the mixture. “We _just_  ate, Rhys.”

I just smiled at her as I pulled the lid back and stuck the spoon into the pudding. She rolled her eyes, but finished mixing the cake batter as I ate the pudding, watching her while she gathered the next ingredients.

She shoved a bag of peanut butter cups a me and I immediately got excited. I got to eat _more_  chocolate before the dessert was prepared. She shook her head as I opened the bag. “You are _not_  eating them, Rhys,” she said sternly. “I need you to peel them for me so that I can start emptying these _fucking_  pudding cups into a bowl.”

I tried and failed to suppress a laugh as she brought up the pudding cups again. She scowled over at me, but it was a half-hearted gesture, and I just smiled innocently at her. She huffed but didn’t bother to hide her small smile as I began to unwrap the peanut butter cups. I dumped the wrappers on the counter and dropped the candies into a bowl that Feyre had passed to me.

By the time the pile of golden wrappers was nearly spilling over onto the floor, each and every candy unwrapped, Feyre had finished getting all the other ingredients ready.

And when she handed me the tool to chop the candy up, she snatched a few of her own before I got to work. I clicked my tongue at her in mocking reproach, and she just stuck her tongue out at me, checking the temperature on the oven once again as we waited for it to be hot enough for the cake.

The oven beeped just as I finished chopping the peanut butter cups into lumps of chocolate and peanut butter. I swung around to grab the glass baking pan and placed it into the oven before Feyre could. She set the timer and reached for the candy, taking a few more little lumps to snack on before dumping them messily into the bowl she’d filled with pudding.

“What the hell?” I vocalized. She shot me a look and I shrugged helplessly. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I’m _supposed_  to,” she retorted obviously, placing her hands on her hips as the timer continued to click away. I pressed my lips together to smother my smile, raising a brow at her.

Her eyes were narrowed as I walked up to her, the playful side of her that I so adored beginning to show. She stepped back as I approached, but I could see the humor lighting up her face. She backed away so that I would follow her, as I certainly did.

That teasing in her eyes was mixed with something darker, more tempting. And that dress swayed around her thighs as she stepped away from me. She hummed low in the back of her throat when her back connected with the wall behind her. She looked at me in wicked delight as I braced my hands against the wall on either side of her face.

Her teeth caught her lower lip, her eyelashes fluttering over her eyes. It was a playful look as much as it was a seductive one.

I leaned closer to her until we were sharing breath, my lips just barely brushing hers. Her breathing hitched a bit and I smiled before pressing my lips and body fully against hers. She moaned softly, bringing her arms up so they wrapped around my neck, arching her back to press herself against me as firmly as possible.

Her fingers tightened in my hair as our kiss became more heated by the second. I moved my hands from the wall to run down her sides, her dress soft under my skin.

I bunched the fabric in my hands, lifting her dress ever so slowly, revealing the pale skin of her upper thighs, inch by inch.

And, just as my hand began to slide up that smooth skin, a bell rang shrilly through the room, effectively startling us both enough to break the kiss, my hand jerking away from her skin like a child caught sneaking an extra cookie.

Feyre laughed a bit breathlessly as she noted the shock on my face. “The timer,” she breathed. “The timer for the cake.”

I groaned as she pressed her hands against my chest, nudging me back a step so she could slip around me to pull on a pair of oven mitts.

She pulled the cake out and set it on the stove so I could help her determine whether it was done. I stuck a butter knife in the middle and nodded to her when it came away clean.

“Maybe don’t use the edges though,” I suggested as harmlessly as I could manage. The outside was a bit dark, but the rest of the cake was perfectly cooked.

Feyre raised a brow but agreed with a shrug.

It took us a while to figure out a system in the kitchen from there on. We bumped into each other a lot as we began to layer the pudding and peanut butter cups, crumbled up cake, and whipped cream.

We were both laughing by the time we were done, and Feyre had quite a bit of chocolate smeared on her face and neck. I had it on my hands from wiping it on her.

She was giggling giddily, a rare sight. Feyre laughed often lately, but didn’t usually giggle. Her laugh was always more of a full, all-consuming sound.

Her giggling was making me laugh as well. It was a vicious cycle, considering every time she looked to me and saw my lips still stretched wide, my eyes still watery from the strength of my laughter, she would begin to giggle again, louder.

Eventually, we both collapsed to the floor on top of each other, dessert momentarily forgotten as we got out the last of our excessive energy.

“Why haven’t we done this before?” Feyre asked suddenly, her breathing finally evening back out as her head rested against my shoulder. “This working together in the kitchen is fun. I mean, I know I’m not exactly much of a help, but I honestly think it’s worth it just to spend the time with you.”

She had tilted her head so that she could look up at me through her lashes, her grey eyes lazy and happy. Her lips were turned up in a content smile, her hair falling around her face messily.

This was when she was at her most beautiful to me. When she was a mess, but a lovely one, when she allowed herself to let go and just be happy. She was so _her_  like this, unaffected by the outside world and comfortable to do and say what she wanted.

I wrapped my arm tighter around her shoulders. “We should do it more often,” I agreed, lowering my head to skim my lips along her high cheekbone before moving on to brush against her ear. “But you know what we need to do right now?”

“Hmm?” She leaned into my touch, nuzzling her face into the crook of my neck.

“We need to eat that cake. And then, we need to prove its name wrong. Although, now that I’ve seen what goes into the cake, I think it may be a bit harder.”

She grinned. “Are you afraid you might not be up for the challenge?”

I gave her my signature smirk, the one that I knew always drew a shiver down her spine in the best way. “Love, I’m always up for some fantastic sex.”

She laughed slightly, just dropping her head back against me as she shook her head. “As if I don’t already know that,” she chuckled, rolling her eyes. “Seriously though, I intend for tonight to be a _long_  night. Good thing you don’t have work tomorrow, hm?” She ran her hand up and down my chest suggestively.

I groaned at her words, my body being affected by them almost as soon as they’d left her mouth.

“Feyre darling, if you keep talking like that, we’re going to have to skip right over the cake.”

She tipped her head to press her lips to my neck. “Good,” she whispered against my skin. “I’m pretty sure I fucked it up anyway.”

I laughed hard enough to earn a slap to the chest, but her scolding fell flat when she began to laugh with me.

We spent the rest of the night wrapped up in each other, not going to sleep until hours past midnight.

And, true to my word, dessert was left untouched until the next morning, when Feyre declared loudly that the cake was _not even close to being better than sex_.


End file.
